Hetashots
by Cordyceps
Summary: Hetalia fanfics from 2008 and 2009. Warning for minimal understanding of history, overabundance of Italy, and occasionally taking the canon way too seriously.
1. Split Second of Introspection

In Venice, a man stares out of his window, opens his eyes, and thinks.

Normally, Feliciano is not a somber man. Normally, he is full of joy and spring and energy and silliness, a silly puppy among his more serious and determined peers. Even when he is sad, it is full of life, full of tears and cries. It's a childlike sadness, a please no-no-no don't-part-from-me I-need-you sadness, helpless and wanting to be hugged. But the cold night air, and the strange melancholy quiet carried by the wind that has almost gone into the marrow of his bones, it makes him quiet and calm. It makes him think about things he is usually too excited to think about. Maybe about things he doesn't want to think about.

Like war. He has never understood war.

He remembers, vaguely, as though a thick and wavy glass is pressed between himself and his memories, when his grandfather was not yet old and worn and tired, and used to tell them stories. Stories about his heroics in battle, stories about gods and heroes other than himself that fought monsters and each other. Some of his siblings showed interests in them, or at least had a sort of half-interest. But he had always found the stories scary and awful, and Lovino always said they were boring, though now he wonders...

_Ah well_, he thinks as he looks at the way the moonlight hit the water. _Maybe I'll ask him later._

When his grandfather began to show his age, and Feliciano had barely gotten to know his brothers, he was taken away to a secluded spot, and the old man asked him to make promises to him.

"Tell me, Italy, that you won't get into as many fights and wars as I did. Tell me you won't try to make yourself an empire like me. I don't want to see you get hurt."

Why would he want to fight when life was so beautiful? Why, as long as the world had flowers and sunlight and birdsong? Why, as long as it had good food and music and art? Why, as long as the world had joy and love and people who loved him? Why would anyone want to do something so awful and scary and sad, when there were so many more wonderful things to do instead? It was so simple to him, it seemed like a silly promise to make. Why not make him promise to keep breathing, or something equally difficult?

He has had enemies who understood war. He has had allies who understood war. Why, he wondered, had Ludwig fought so much, even when he clearly disliked it? "I am a soldier; it's what I have to do," he would say, rigid and military and stern as always, "don't you know how to be one?" No, he didn't know how to be a soldier, and he still doesn't. Ludwig didn't know how to not be a soldier. Neither did Kiku, not back then.

He wonders why everyone else seems to be fighting so much. If they're not fighting each other, they're still being all aggressive and mean and teetering on the edge, or having some kind of internal struggle, like they have to be fighting someone, even themselves and then he realizes he can't smell his pasta anymore. Closing his eyes and turning his head to the table, he puts his hand on the table and puts his hand on, over, almost in the bowl. Yep, cold. He sighs, this time less deeply and more childish-sad, sad that his food is too cold to eat now. He is still hungry too!_ But on the bright side_, he thinks with a smile that is beginning to grow, _this gives me an excuse to make something else!_ Bright and cheerful once more, he runs off to the kitchen to see if he has any more tomato sauce and flour and garlic left. And he has mostly forgotten what he was thinking about, which is good, because he doesn't like thinking about unhappy things anyways. Why think about unhappy things, when life is so beautiful?


	2. Grey Stone and Bold Color

_It's all wrong. _

Rome is dead. The city still stands, but the empire – the empire is dead. Rome was his idol. He loved Rome, worshiped Rome, treasured the land on which Rome stood, poured over his history, his life story, memorized the curves and edges of his face, traced his lines on every map he touched. He named himself after Rome, hoping that his hero's greatness would rub off on him. As far as the young country was concerned, Rome was a god among their kind.

But now Rome is dead. All that is left of the man is a statue.

_It's far too emotionless_, he thinks, _too lifeless_. Rome's eyes had a fire that stone cannot replicate, his hair with all its messy curls (he sees the artist left some out) a wildness better suited to the strokes of a painter's brush. The face is too serious, too solemn for a country raised on wine by wolves' children. The artist was probably not one who knew Rome personally, probably not one who knew as much about Rome as he thought he did. The boy, looking up at his hero's marble face, is sure he could do better. _But I do not have the skill. _

At first he loved Italy because she was Rome's granddaughter. _You have the same cities, the same soil, the same people. His mountains and streams are yours, and yours are his. His blood runs in your veins. _And he wanted her greatness because it was Rome's greatness, wanted her land and people and cities because they were Rome's, wanted to be one with her because he wanted them (_him and her,_ _you and me_, _**us**_) to be Rome.

But she was not Rome. Her cities were hers because they were not Rome's anymore; her people were not of the same generation as Rome's. You could tell, if you had walked in those streets all those centuries before, that Rome's presence was gone, and that a new spirit (just as brilliant, but not as hot, not as burning) had moved in, had transformed it somehow. She did not fight, did not wish to fight, loved many things but not battle, not warfare, not the thrill and the armor and the blood and the death. She was gentle and exuberant and had a culture like a tropical bird's feathers (colorful, beautiful, fascinating), but she did not have the heart of an empire.

And he loved her, her eyes that were bright as stars but not with fire, her smile that was foolish and not sharp, her people who were not warriors. He asked her how to paint, how to keep his pictures from being flat and dull and ugly, how to show light and shadows and water and land stretching out forever and the curves of the human body. And she taught him, patiently, kindly, correcting his mistakes. And when he had finally mastered the art, could finally capture the fire of Rome on canvas, it was not Rome he painted.

It was Italy.


	3. Red Mirror

Alfred breaks the mirror because his smile reminds him of Ivan.

Not exactly, of course. It's a sweeter, dociler smile. It's a wide, white, everything-is-all-right smile, a of-course-I'm-not-worried-not-angry-not-disagreeing-not-anything smile. A housewife smile. But the falseness is there, just like in Ivan's. Falsely sweet.  
>It's not so much a smile he puts on when at meetings, an act put on for others. It's the smile he forces himself to wear when his paranoia is panting behind him like a large furry black beast, the smile finds himself wearing while he's cleaning the house. He cleans to keep his mind off things, to drive away the growing fear of Ivan, of communism, of himself. Oh, here's something red! A vase? Very nice, was it a gift from someone? He can't remember, but that's not important, is it? It's red. Throw it away.<br>It is the smile he wears when he says he is nothing like Ivan.  
>It is the smile he wears when he says he will never be like Ivan.<br>It is the smile he wears when he lies to himself.

And it takes a mirror for him to see that his smile is making him more like the person he fears and hates.


	4. Light and Shadow

_"Why are you doing this? It doesn't make any sense!"_  
>"It's the only way I'll ever grow. It's the only way they'll ever take me seriously."<p>

It's a dark room. Midnight is here and the shadows are pitch-black and jagged, waiting for the mind of some unsuspecting child to turn their black forms into demons and monsters and wolves. Italy is also dark, not just the black of his clothes or the brown of his hair, but the shadows that drape his forehead, cover his eyes, line his cheeks and neck. The only light thing in the room is Italy's younger self, his child self,dressed in white with pink and blue and yellow shadows, looking all alone and lost in this black black room.

_"But... but Grampa said empires have to fight all the time, and that empires have lots of enemies, and that they get hurt alot. Don't you remember the scars on his back? They looked so painful... __I don't want that to happen..._  
>"But I have friends, little me! I have Germany and Japan. And we're all going to be empires, all three of us, and we're all going to rule the world together. And everyone else will be sorry about the way they treated us, because they'll see how strong we are now!"<br>_"But you can't all rule the world. What if your bosses don't agree, or they want your land, or..._  
>"They wouldn't do that! They're my friends!"<br>_"They would if they're scary like you are!"_  
>"I'm not scary!<br>Italy doesn't understand why he's hurt. He knows that it's better to be feared than to be loved; he's been told so by his leader. He knows that being lovable won't get the rest of Europe to respect him the way he wants. And Germany _is _scary, the way he shouts and orders and stares and fights. And frankly Japan's a little scary too sometimes, but Italy'd never say that out loud. He knows all this. So why...?

_Except that big Italy is courting death (and little Italy can smell it), not the kind of death where old people fall asleep and don't wake up, but nasty death, icky black death, death of sour blood and choking lungs and broken skin, courting it with intense eyes and fingers that clutch a little too strongly. _

And Italy doesn't care how many of his die, because he is the State, and the state can't die because it isn't human, it lives as long as people are willing to die, as long as people will spill blood to keep it alive and strengthen it, which they always will, because men birth war and

and when did war start making sense to him?

_He still can't see the big Italy's eyes, but the shadows in them shift a little bit, like maybe he's sad or lonely. It's hard to tell when you can't see people's eyes. And big Italy starts shaking like he needs a blanket, so he gets one for him, and big Italy gets down on the floor and crouches and there's a tremble in his voice like a weak wind rustling through a grotto. _

"I'm not scary...am I?"


End file.
